Start the installer, click Next and InstallThe installer will put JPLAY in C:\\JPLAY\ folder and while you can specify your own path it’s best to just leave everything default. Do not attempt to install on removable devices like memory sticks – it won’t work.

Restart your PC

JPLAY can be used via JPLAYStreamer, ultra-minimalistic non-GUI interface, JPLAYmini or
together with ANY audio player that has support for ASIO Output: just choose JPLAY Driver from the list of available ASIO devices and you’re ready to play – it’s that simple! Note that your audio interface does NOT have to support ASIO. You continue using KS/WASAPI/ASIO as before: JPLAY ASIO Driver is simply used as means to more transparently integrate with host player!

JPLAYStreamer converts your PC into audiophile network player and is recommended for best sound quality & ease of use. JPLAYStreamer is based on OpenHome Media standard for home audio devices which allows JPLAY to be used with OpenHome/UPnP/DLNA control points on multiple platforms.

Control your music wirelessly from any room using your favorite mobile device and experience the highest possible sound quality!

You can stream music to your system directly from PC with JPLAY installed, from any other PC/Mac or from NAS. JPLAYStreamer will play your music whenever it is.

All you need, apart from JPLAY on your PC, is a media server software. While any UPnP/DLNA Media Server should work in principle, we recommend using MinimServer specifically for it’s ‘classical music-lover’ and ‘silent low-power’ operation focus plus multi-platform availability.

To get MinimServer Up & Running follow these steps:

Download and install Java.

For Windows: Get this if on Windows 64, Otherwise (or if not sure) just get this

Download and install MinimServer:
choose x64 build if you are on 64-bit OS or 32bit otherwise or if not sure

If you want to install on your Mac OSX or NAS choose appropriate link instead.

After installation run MinimServer and give it location of your music library when asked.

Then right-click on MinimServer icon in notification area and open Properties.
Go to Packages and install MinimStreamer

Go to System tab and set MinimStreamer to convert FLAC and DSD to WAV: type flac:wav, dff:dopwav, dsf:dopwav in the stream.transcode field as shown below

It is absolutely necessary to set transcoding unless all files in your library are WAV

For ALAC, MP3 & AAC formats you need ffmpeg tool! You can download it from here: link to 32bit build, link to 64bit build. Extract anywhere and copy ffmpeg.exe to MinimServer folder. Put the path to ffmpeg.exe in the stream.converter field (default MinimServer path is C:\Program Files\MinimServer\) and add alac:wav, mp3:wav24, aac:wav24 in the stream.transcode field as shown below.

This step can be skipped if you don’t have ALAC, MP3 & AAC files in your library.

Choose your interface for browsing music and controlling playback: We recommend FREE OpenSource Kazoo which is available for Windows, Mac OSX, iOS and BubbleDS Next for Android.

When you run Kazoo/BubbleDS Next select MinimServer as Media Server (Library) and JPLAYStreamer as Room. Enjoy!

JPLAYStreamer requires Windows 8 OS or later

Using JPLAYStreamer with TIDAL & qobuz streaming services

JPLAYStreamer now supports TIDAL and qobuz streaming services! (currently only in combination with BubbleDS Next or BubbleUPnP on Android!)
To browse TIDAL or qobuz in BubbleDS Next, select the local media server as the current library in the top side menu, go to the Library tab -> Cloud -> Tidal / qobuz

You can access JPLAYsettings by double-clicking JPLAY icon in Notification Area (Taskbar) or clicking on JPLAY Settings shortcut in Start menu

Note playback needs to be stopped before changing settings. Please see Settings panel for detailed explanations of all parameters. Minimal DAC Link with Qobuz desktop app is 2.5Hz

Using JPLAY with Spotify (Fidelify)

Start Fidelify

Go to Settings and select JPLAY Driver

Use Spotify as usual

You can access JPLAYsettings by double-clicking JPLAY icon in Notification Area (Taskbar) or clicking on JPLAY Settings shortcut in Start menu

Note playback needs to be stopped before changing settings.Please see Settings panel for detailed explanations of all parameters. Spotify premium account is required.

Using JPLAYmini

Start JPLAYmini – click on the shortcut in Start Menu or double-click JPLAYmini.exe in JPLAY’s installation folder (default is C:\\JPLAY\\)

Select track you would like to play directly from disk with e.g. Windows Explorer, do right-click and copy (or Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut), activate JPLAYmini”s window and press space bar. You can also select tracks from other players: iTunes, foobar2000 etc. in similar fashion.

You can access JPLAYsettings by double-clicking JPLAY icon in Notification Area (Taskbar) or clicking on JPLAY Settings shortcut in Start menu

Recommended DAC Link with ASIOBridge is 170Hz and PC Buffer below 0.5s to minimize delay. ASIOBridge is not our product and is donation-ware so if you find it useful please donate 10 or 20 euro to Vincent at Virtual Cable as without his assistance this would not have been possible!
Xtream engine is not supported for ASIOBridge! (If possible, use ULTRAStream for best results) If your player does support ASIO we recommend you stick with player’s ASIO driver! (but you are free to experiment: e.g. any player set to KS/WASAPI or DirectSound should work as well.)

Using JPLAY with Roon

Click on the System Output (speaker icon)

Go to Audio Setup

Click Enable next to JPLAY Driver [ASIO] and type jplay as Zone Name

Set jplay as active zone

Using JPLAY in dual PC setup

For serious audiophiles JPLAY also supports a dual PC setup (setup with two PCs connected via LAN) with dedicated Audio PC fully optimised for music transport.

Setup is the same: Install JPLAY on both PCs and configure the host player as explained above on Control PC. Next open JPLAYSettings panel and click on the button next to Audio PC until you see Search my LAN for JPLAY: click OK to initiate search.

If both PCs are on same LAN you should see a message Found JPLAY on 1 computer. Click OK, reopen JPLAYSettings and you should be able to select your AudioPC and change settings from Control PC.

If Search my LAN for JPLAY does not find a running JPLAY instance on network you may have a firewall or your LAN settings may need to be entered manually: Please see Network troubleshooting for further information. Note you don’t need to have any software on AudioPC apart from Windows and JPLAY: Players like foobar2000 or any other ASIO capable player run on Control PC so also all CPU activity they create (loading, decompressing, DSP etc) is completely isolated from Audio PC which sees only music bytes coming via network.

Both Wired and WiFi connections are supported although wired Ethernet is usually more reliable especially if you live in an apartment and have strong interference from multiple WiFi spots. JPLAYStreamer on Control PC should be used in dual PC setup.

Settings panel

To open the GUI panel, double-click on JPLAY icon in Notification Area (Taskbar)

Below you can see JPLAY Settings GUI panel which allows for quick & easy adjustment of most important options, click on the button to adjust.

Kernel Streaming / WASAPI / ASIO

WASAPI may be compatible with greater number of devices, but Kernel Streaming offers much lower latency. KS is the lowest audio engine level in Windows, allowing more efficient, real-time streaming. For the ultimate playback experience, we recommend KS. ASIO is applicable only to DACs that have an ASIO driver. Note that on 64bit Windows 64bit ASIO driver is required.

Classic, Xtream, ULTRAStream

JPLAY offers three unique bit-perfect playback engines. You should try all and decide which one is closer to your preferences and which one works better in your system. ULTRAStream works only on Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012/R2 AudioPC! (in dual PC setup Win7/Vista is OK for ControlPC). Xtream works only for Kernel Streaming. Please note this engine is ‘extreme’ in sense that it will use a lot of additional RAM (use larger Buffer if you get ‘low memory’ warnings from Windows) and may delay stop/pause/next/etc commands by up to 25 seconds depending on settings so be patient if after e.g. pressing ‘stop’ music does not stop immediately – it is normal behavior!

select between ‘This computer’ and your dedicated AudioPC if you have one and have set up the network connection between them. .

Native (Best),24,32

Some DACs support only 24 bits and others may ‘prefer’ 32 bits. If you get ‘DAC does not support given sample rate/format’ or ‘Could not start playback: ASIO start failed’ error message please change Bitstream from default Native settings to 24 or 32 and try again.
If you are _not_ using JPLAYmini or JPLAYStreamer then ‘Native’ setting will use 16 bits for 44 & 48kHz. If actual track uses 24 bits set Bitstream to ‘Force 24′ when playing those tracks. Leave at ‘Native’ when using JPLAYmini or JPLAYStreamer.

-6dB,-12dB,-18dB,-24dB,-30dB

If you do not have a pre-amp, i.e. no ability to control volume then you can do so here while still keeping the signal ‘bit-perfect’ (provided DAC supports more than 16 bits. Only ~6dB steps are allowed in order to preserve ‘bit-perfect’ output. Also note that if you apply volume to hi-rez tracks, they won’t be bit-perfect anymore (unless your DAC can process 32 bits) – in theory that’s not ideal but in practice it may not matter due to huge dynamic range of 24-bit material.

normal,inverted

Unfortunately some albums are recorded with ‘inverted’ polarity i.e. ‘plus’ and ‘minus’ have been connected the ‘wrong’ way. Most albums are OK and most people don’t notice the difference anyway – just like most people don’t notice if left & right channels are reversed… but those who do will immediately spot that music sounds ‘dull’ or that bass is ‘boomy’ or ‘slow’ (to quote our reviewer Bill Gaw from EnjoyTheMusic.com) – reversing polarity will ‘fix’ those albums… Mind you that listening to albums, where polarity is ‘right’ with the option enabled (i.e. inverted polarity) will most likely compromise sound quality and is not recommended.

1-700Hz

Determines how often DAC is sent new music data. Some people prefer high frequency (170/350/700Hz) and others prefer low (5, 2.5 & 1Hz).

Not all values will work with every DAC so best to try different values and choose what works best in your system. Qobuz requires minimum 2.5Hz. For ASIOBridge it is recommended to use 170Hz and PC Buffer below 0.5s to minimize delay.

0.01-10s

Determines amount of RAM used to cache music data. Default & recommended value is 1 second.

Reducing PC Buffer value also reduces delay

1-5000

default 1000. You can change the amount of RAM used by Xtream: some people prefer sound quality produced by large values: Maximum setting is 5000 but will require several Gigabytes of free RAM so it requires 64bit OS with 8GB RAM minimum! Larger values will increase delay between stop/start/next button presses and music actually following starts so this is recommended only for album-listening sessions. (with XtreamSize set to 5000 could be up to ±30 seconds!).

OFF,ON

When Throttle mode is activated, JPLAY will reduce to absolute minimum both CPU and I/O priorities of all running processes and individual threads in the system it can get to, without risking the stability of Windows. Note that if use only a single PC this will reduce system’s responsiveness! (e.g. mouse may become ‘jerky’ and machine may appear ‘stuck’ at times when CPU intensive tasks are activated) If you’re doing CPU intensive work, it’s best to turn off Throttle mode, but if you are ‘just browsing’, we advise to leave it ‘ON’. Naturally, if you have a DualPC setup with a networked AudioPC leave setting to ON. (setting is applied only to AudioPC so your ‘work’ or ‘ControlPC’ is not affected in any way.

OFF,ON

Hibernate mode eliminates dozens of OS jitter-inducing processes & hundreds of threads, providing best possible sound quality. Please note Hibernate is ‘extreme’ mode and is not guaranteed to work on all systems! Hibernate mode is more likely to run in Dual PC mode with a dedicated AudioPC. On single PC USB stick needs to be inserted into USB port to start playback – unplugging the stick will be the only way to stop playback. In DualPC mode stick si not needed as you can fully control Hibernation of AudioPC from your laptop (‘ControlPC’).

MiniMode: [0,1] default and recommended is 1. JPLAYmini does not use memcopy during playback.

StreamerDestination: IP of a network adapter used with JPLAYStreamer.

StreamerSubnet: if you have multiple network adapters in PC and they are on different subnets (i.e. first 3 numbers of IP address are not identical) you can put desired subnet into StreamerSubnet property. For example: if all other OpenHome components are on 192.168.1.xx subnet then type 192.168.1.0 (last number should be 0). Then from Task Manager->Services restart JPLAYStreamer service.

XtreamBuffer: [0-1024] default is 0. Set number of samples Xtream Engine uses in a packet. For example, if you used DirectLink in JPLAY v5 set it to 1.

XtreamMode: [0,1] Some older drivers which worked with Xtream Engine in JPLAY v5 do not work in JPLAY v6. Setting XtreamMode to 1 will use ‘old’ behaviour from v5.

Troubleshooting

I downloaded your player, installation went fine but it does not work?

Please restart your PC after installation.

I am experiencing random playback stops. What shall I do?

Please adjust DAC Link parameter in JPLAY Settings panel

I loaded some tracks in JPLAYmini, but instead of music I got a message saying: “Memory Error: Track too big for your ‘Memory’ setting”. What should I do?

If your device doesn’t support Kernel Streaming, WASAPI (event) or ASIO, it won’t work with JPLAY. If you use WASAPI, but can’t select your sound device then you must set it as ‘default’: Go to ‘Playback devices’ (right-click on speaker icon in lower right corner of your desktop), select a device you want to use in JPLAY, right-click on it and set as default. Once you do that, double-click on the default device, go to ‘advanced’ tab and make sure that ‘Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device’ and ‘Give exclusive mode applications priority’ fields are ticked.

Try setting Bitstream in JPLAY Settings panel to 24 or 32. If that does not help it could be that your audio interface does not support automatic sample-rate switching (most do). In that case you will have to select the sample-rate manually: go to your sound card control panel, select the desired sample rate and do the same in ‘Control Panel’->’Sound’->’Playback devices’->’Your default audio device’->’Advanced’- >’Default Format’.

You may need to open port 48168 or add jplay.exe process to exceptions in firewall. (then restart JPLAY Service from Task Manager->Services).

JPLAYStreamer is not available under Room in my control point. Why?

Please make sure JPLAYStreamer.exe process is added to exceptions in firewall. (then restart JPLAYStreamer service from Task Manager->Services).

JPLAYStreamer is seen by control point apps, but music is not played. Any idea?

Please make sure you have set transcoding to WAV in MinimServer as described here.

Hibernate mode doesn’t work. JPLAY loads tracks for playback, the screen goes blank and nothing happens; I have to perform hard reset on my PC. Sometimes it plays music fine, but doesn’t ‘wake up’ when the playback finishes.

Hibernate is not guaranteed to work on all systems. This could be due to unwanted 3rd party software/driver interaction. The most common culprit is anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Try disabling it and see if that helps.
We highly recommend using dual PC setup with dedicated AudioPC and ‘naked’ operating system installation (=no additional software installed apart from OS & JPLAY).
In single PC mode any USB stick needs to be plugged in in order for Hibernate to start. Unplugging the stick during playback will exit Hibernate mode. (USB stick with highest letter in Windows is used as trigger)

When I run JPLAY.exe nothing happens. What should I do?

Do not click on jplay.exe. Use JPLAYStreamer/foobar2000/JPLAYmini or other host player as described in Setup instructions.

If telnet is not found install it from Control Center > Turn Windows Features on/off and select Telnet Client from list

If you get blank screen all is OK! (press Ctrl+ ] to exit)

If you get error either JPLAY is not runnig on AudioPC or is blocked by firewall – open port 48168 or just disable firewall

If everything so far is OK but Search my LAN for JPLAY still can’t find JPLAY then open regedit on ControlPC, go to HKEY_Current_User/Software/JPLAY6 and edit AudioPC key like this:Note: name can be anything, the important part is the IP address!

Select newly added Audio PC from JPLAYsettings and press OK

If all is well, there will be no error and you should be able to edit settings and play music